After falsely claiming that 3-5 million people voted illegally for his opponent in the 2016 election, President Trump announced his intention in late January to set up a commission to investigate voter fraud, a decision he formalized with an executive order in May. On Feb. 22, a Heritage Foundation employee wrote an email to Attorney General Jeff Sessions saying he'd heard the "disturbing" news that the commission's chairman, Vice President Mike Pence, planned to make the panel bipartisan and urged that only like-minded conservatives be appointed, according to a copy of the email obtained by the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center (CLC) through a freedom-of-information request.

The Justice Department redacted the name of the Heritage Foundation's self-proclaimed vote-fraud expert, but the conservative think tank effectively confirmed to Gizmodo that the author was Hans von Spakovsky, who was later appointed to the commission and is identified by the CLC as "widely considered the architect of the voter fraud myth." At the commission's second public meeting on Tuesday, before Heritage confirmed that Spakovsky wrote the email, Pro Publica's Jessica Huseman asked him "point blank" if he'd "authored this document, he said no." She posted audio of the exchange.

In the email, the Heritage Foundation employee presumed to be Spakovsky argued to Sessions that "there isn't a single Democratic official that will do anything other than obstruct any investigation of voter fraud" and claim that the commission "is engaged in voter suppression," and that "mainstream Republican officials and/or academics" would also make the commission "an abject failure." The author also complained that none of the "real experts on the conservative side" had been appointed "other than Kris Kobach," the committee's vice chairman, Kansas secretary of state, and Breitbart News columnist.

Pence and Kobach eventually appointed seven Republicans and five Democrats to the commission, though one Democrat resigned. But the CLC said that the email adds "to the mounting evidence that the commission has no interest in true bipartisanship or an open discussion of how to solve the real problems in our elections." CLC president Trevor Potter, a former GOP chairman of the Federal Election Commission, said that Kobach's "farcical meetings" continue "to validate the worst suspicions about the commission: that it is designed to shrink the electorate for partisan advantage." He suggested they focus on "a true issue of election integrity" like Russians buying political ads on Facebook.

UPDATE: Spakovsky said in a statement that the email was sent to "private individuals who were not in the administration" and "was unaware that it had been forwarded" to Sessions. He added that he now believes the commission is "committed to uncovering the truth about election integrity and the other issues present in our election system." Peter Weber

The latest U.S. jobs report has come in way under expectations.

The Labor Department said Friday the U.S. economy added 266,000 jobs in April, whereas economists had been expecting around 1 million jobs would be added, CNBC reports. The Labor Department had previously said that 916,000 jobs were added in March, though this number was revised down to 770,000 on Friday. The unemployment rate also increased slightly from six percent to 6.1 percent.

The report was so significantly below expectations that Politico reporter Megan Cassella wrote that when she saw the 266,000 number, "I thought this was a glitch on my computer." In fact, it was "the biggest miss, relative to expectations, in the history of the payrolls report," Axios reports.

Economist Justin Wolfers wrote that 266,000 jobs being added "would be fabulous in normal times, but is utterly disappointing" compared to the forecasts, adding, "This is a big miss that changes how we think about the recovery."

The miss comes as some businesses, The Washington Post writes, have told lawmakers they've been "having a hard time recruiting workers, particularly for low-wage, hourly jobs." Glassdoor senior economist Daniel Zhao said the result was surprising "given the increasing distribution of vaccines and continuing economic reopening," adding it will likely be "interpreted as being caused by labor shortages, raising the temperature on the political debate surrounding extended unemployment benefits." Brendan Morrow

Florida on Thursday joined Georgia in enacting a sweeping Republican election law that constricts voting rights in the state, and Texas, which already had some of the most stringent voting laws in the country, is on the cusp of joining them. Democrats were not able to stop the new voting laws in the country's biggest red states, but House Democrats passed their own countervailing national voting rights legislation, the "For the People Act" or HR1, in March, and Senate Democrats are working on their own version, S1.

When Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Wednesday that "100 percent of my focus is on stopping this new administration," these voting reform bills might have been what he had in mind. McConnell has publicly and privately conveyed his fervent opposition to the legislation. But "what's different, conservatives say, is his personal level of commitment behind-the-scenes to educate activists on just how damaging the legislation would be to the future electoral prospects of Republicans," McClatchy D.C. reports.

"So many times the conservative movement only works with McConnell when it's a Supreme Court nomination, or a Supreme Court fight," Jessica Anderson, executive director of Heritage Action, tells McClatchy. "And so we've been trying to change that with HR 1 and S1 and really make this fight similar and more akin to a Supreme Court fight, where it's like an all-hands-on-deck effort."

As the Senate prepares to mark up the legislation in the Rules & Administration Committee next week, "some progressives have warned that McConnell is taking the legislation more seriously than even Democrats are," McClatchy reports. "At the moment, McConnell looks to hold the advantage," with moderate Democrats "fretting about the sheer size of the bill" and Republicans confident Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) will side with them in the 50-50 Senate. Peter Weber

The COVID-19 vaccine from Pfizer and BioNTech could become the first in the United States to receive full FDA approval.

The companies announced Friday they have initiated an application seeking full approval of the vaccine for people 16 and over from the Food and Drug Administration, CNN reports. The vaccine is now being administered under an emergency use authorization, a "mechanism to facilitate the availability and use of" vaccines "during public health emergencies," per the FDA.

Receiving full FDA approval requires six months of safety and efficacy data, as opposed the two months required for the emergency use authorization, according to NBC News. CNN chief medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta stressed Friday this isn't to suggest that data didn't already show the vaccine to be safe and effective or that the process to get the emergency authorization wasn't rigorous, but the "bar of data that you now have to show" to get full approval is even higher, he said on New Day.

With that in mind, experts have said full FDA approval could help reduce vaccine hesitancy and further demonstrate that the vaccines are safe. Former U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams wrote in The Washington Post that "many people who are lower risk" have expressed uncertainty over whether the "benefits justify taking a medication that has not received the full and traditional FDA stamp of approval." So full approval might provide a "boost of confidence to people who were on the fence about getting vaccinated," Brown University School of Public Health dean Ashish Jha said.

If the vaccine is fully approved, Pfizer can also start marketing and distributing it. Another key difference, CNN writes, is that full approval could "have an impact on vaccine mandates," as "some organizations say they expect to require the vaccine, but have opted not to while it's authorized and not yet fully approved." ABC News reports it's likely to take "several months" for the FDA to make a decision. Brendan Morrow

India set another global COVID-19 record Friday, reporting 414,188 new confirmed cases in the past 24 hours plus 3,915 new deaths. Both numbers are believed to be significant undercounts. With daily deaths remaining above 3,800 for the past 10 days and hospitals running out of beds, oxygen, and other critical supplies, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is facing increasing pressure to put the country back under lockdown for 2-4 weeks or launch some other coordinated central response to the pandemic.

An earlier strict lockdown is credited with India's success, until March, in containing the coronavirus outbreaks, but it took a terrible economic toll on India and especially its poorest citizens. Modi so far has left it up to India's 28 states to set their own mitigation measures, and fewer than a dozen have instituted some lesser restrictions.

India isn't alone in battling new variant-driven waves of COVID-19, and Egypt, Turkey, and other countries are "trying to ensure they aren't hit by an India-style disaster," The Associated Press reports. "They face many of the same risks, including large populations that have shirked restrictions and fragile health systems shaken under the strain." In wealthier nations, aggressive vaccination campaigns have sent cases and deaths on downward trajectories.

Worldwide, however, there have been more COVID-19 cases reported over the past two weeks than in the first six months of the pandemic, World Health Organization director general Tedros Adhanom said. India and Brazil account for a large share of those numbers, "but there are many other countries all over the world that face a very fragile situation," he added. "What is happening in India and Brazil could happen elsewhere unless we all take these public health precautions." Peter Weber

The Federal Election Commission announced Thursday that it will not investigate possible campaign finance violations by former President Donald Trump's 2016 campaign, tied to a $130,000 hush payment made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels. Trump's former personal lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen had paid Daniels right before the election to keep her from disclosing an extramarital affair she says she had with Trump.

The payment was not reported on Trump's campaign filings. Cohen, who said he paid off Daniels and another woman on Trump's behalf and on his orders, was jailed in 2018 for violating campaign finance laws, tax evasion, and lying to Congress.

The FEC deadlocked over investigating Trump in a closed-door meeting in February, with two Republican commissioners voting to drop the issue, two Democratic commissioners voting to push forward, one Republican commissioner recusing himself, and the sixth commissioner, an independent, absent. The FEC's nonpartisan general counsel's office had advised investigating Trump, reporting in December it found "reason to believe" his campaign had "knowingly and willfully" violated campaign finance laws.

The two voting GOP commissioners, Trey Trainor and Sean Cooksey, explained in a letter that they "voted to dismiss these matters as an exercise of our prosecutorial discretion," arguing that "the public record is complete" due to Cohen's punishment and "pursuing these matters further was not the best use of agency resources."

The two Democratic commissioners, Ellen Weintraub and Chairwoman Shana Broussard, disagreed, noting that agency staff had recommended an investigation. "To conclude that a payment, made 13 days before Election Day to hush up a suddenly newsworthy 10-year-old story, was not campaign-related, without so much as conducting an investigation, defies reality," they wrote.

Cohen told The New York Times in a statement that "the hush money payment was done at the direction of and for the benefit of Donald J. Trump," adding: "Like me, Trump should have been found guilty. How the FEC committee could rule any other way is confounding." Peter Weber

"The CDC just announced that they expect to see a sharp decline in COVID cases in the U.S. by July," Jimmy Fallon said on Thursday's Tonight Show. "So get ready for Etsy's newest item, bikinis made from recycled masks."

Meanwhile in Washington, "House Republicans want to kick Liz Cheney off of their leadership team because she refuses to side with Trump and say the election was stolen," Fallon said. "You could tell Republicans also upset Dick Cheney, because they were like, 'We should totally ditch Liz, she's such a....'" — and here he made a Darth Vader joke.

"I've got to give props to Liz Cheney for risking her political career to stand up for what she believes in," Trevor Noah said at The Daily Show. But "loyalty to Trump is a defining principle of the GOP right now, and if she doesn't agree with that, it doesn't make much sense for her to be one of the party's leaders." Most Republicans say they believe President Biden did steal the election, "and even now, there are still efforts going on to overturn the results in close states, including a big one in Arizona," he said. "And if you're wondering how a bunch of conspiracy nuts are going to turn a Biden win into a Trump win, the answer is, in the craziest way possible."

"The GOP is now so committed to the deranged lie that Trump actually won the election," they're punishing Liz Cheney "simply for living in reality," Late Night's Seth Meyers sighed Wednesday night. "You think I want to side with Liz Cheney? For one thing, she's never met a war she didn't support, and I'm afraid that if I'm too nice to her, her dad will invite me hunting and shoot me in the face. But this isn't about Liz Cheney.... it's about why she's being punished."

Jimmy Kimmel skipped Liz Cheney for Caitlyn Jenner, who sat down with Sean Hannity to discuss her gubernatorial bid. "This is how well Caitlyn Jenner understands the plight of everyday Californians here in L.A.," he said on Kimmel Live. "She mentions this airplane she flies, multiple times. They had this town hall in her own airplane hangar," the setting for an anecdote about rich friends fleeing in private jets to avoid seeing homeless people. "Is it transphobic to call a trans person an ignorant a-hole?" he pondered. Peter Weber